Schism and left controlled dice

[Nocker]

Hello,
1) When you Schism, you take dice you control (i.e. you have Debt under) and place it on a new Side. But what if there is dice you control but choose not to move ? What happens to these dice ?
It seems odd to me that they could still be controlled by a Character that "change allegiance". Is his Drive really still bound to this Side ?

I can see three solutions :
- the Debt Tokens under unmoved dice are removed
- you are always forced to move all the dice you control (and if you control all the dice, this confronts with the rule that force to let at least one die behind)
- nothing changes, but in this case, you'll have to explain to me the signification of this "distant" control


2) The notion of controlling the dice on the Conflicts buggs me a little because once Character (say a Hero) Stakes Debt on a Side and take control of all the dice on this Side, other Allied Characters will never be able to control dice on this Side. This means two disturbing things :
- they will never Stake Debt on this Side (because even a Splitting keeps the initial Character controlling all dice). Why couldn't they be emotionnaly involved in a Side because somone else is already ?
- they will never be able to Split or Schism, which reduce their options, whereas it could make sense in the story.


Thanks in advance

[Dominic Claveau]

I'm not exactly sure how to answer to your first question, but I think I see why you are asking both these questions. You seem to believe that when you stake debt, you get the "ownership" of the dice, which, as far as I know, is not the case.

You stake debt on a side of a conflict, not on the dice itself, even though staking is manifested by placing a token under a dice. The term "control" should be reserved to the fact of controling a conflict by being associated to the side which has the highest total.

As for schism itself, well, like I said, I'm not sure what to answer. All the examples I remember were referring to a situation where there is no debt staken yet. I would tend to believe that schism implies the notion of leaving a side, a group, but that group still remains. So, if there is 2 die and you schism, you should leave the lowest and take the highest for your self, even though you've staken both tokens Remember, when debt is on a conflict, your character is rid of it, since it doesn't count for overdrowning. Keeping that train of thought, I'd say that if there is 3 die, you can take the two highest, and so on...

Anyways, I'm not 100% certain about all of this, but that's really how I understand things.

[TonyLB]

1) When you Schism, you take dice you control (i.e. you have Debt under) and place it on a new Side. But what if there is dice you control but choose not to move ?

No.  That's not a choice you get to make.  When you defect to a third side, you take your dice and away you go.  Off with you!  You don't get to split your moral statement on the matter into two pieces and say 'Well, part of me thinks that Justice demands the Wallflower's execution, but part of me thinks that perhaps life is too important ..."  It's super-heroes.  Your character takes a position and stands by it one hundred percent, if not more.

You seem to believe that when you stake debt, you get the "ownership" of the dice, which, as far as I know

Eh, the schisming rules are pretty slapdash and loose in that regard.  They don't really address the following situation:  Justice Joe puts three points of debt on the conflict 'Awaken feeling in the Chrome Skull's shrivelled, black heart', and Silk Stalker puts two points in on the same side ... and they roll up dice and get a really high number, then Silk Stalker suddenly makes it all about sexual feeling, which squicks Justice Joe out, so he schisms off.  Does he take the three best dice that he can find, or does he have to specifically take the three dice that were on top of his debt?

The way I figure it, if you weren't paying attention to whose dice were whose, and were just rolling up as a team, then Justice Joe deserves the benefit of the doubt, and he should grab the best dice out there.  If you were paying attention then, wow, you've been paying attention and it'll be easy to know which dice are Joe's and give them to him.

And since, in my games, schisms are really really rare I haven't had to worry about it too much yet.  If people have got actual play examples of how the problem arose and how they worked through it, I suspect that would help to ground this discussion nicely.  Not to be dismissive of the question in the abstract (I like exploring the extremities of a ruleset as much as the next guy), just hoping that if there are AP examples out there we'll hear 'em.

[Nocker]

Ok. To be true, it's the whole concept of "controlling the dice on a side by Staking Debt under" (which I found here) that I don't understand.
Is there really a mechanism to claim (no capital "C") some dice your own when you Stake Debt ? Why was it introduce ? What does it imply ?

[TonyLB]

What does it imply ?

In practice?  Not really a whole heck of a lot.

[Nocker]

I can see some cases (cases that often happen) where the lack of the "controlling of dice" rule being a huge difference. That's why I need to know if it's a sort of errata (official and necessary for the game to work), or just an idea some people come up with.

What if a Character Stake 2 Debt on a side with three dice and three Debt under them ? Is it possible by the book ? Isn't the "control dice" rule made to prevent it ? Is there a reason to prevent it ?

[TonyLB]

If a character stakes two debt on a side with three dice already then he splits them off just like he was increasing it to a side with (now) five debt.

I swear to you, this is an issue which is occupying a thousand times more space in your attention than it has ever (to my knowledge) occupied in anyone's game, ever.

[Nocker]

Okay, I'll come back if it becomes an actual issue during a game ^^